Changing Perspective

Training the mind is often quite different to how people imagine it to be. Maybe they have an idea it's about stopping thoughts or eliminating feelings, but the reality is a bit different. An easy way to think of it is to imagine yourself sitting on the side of a busy road, the passing cars representing the thoughts and the feelings. All you have to do is to sit there and watch the cars. Sounds easy, right? But what usually happens is that we feel a bit unsettled by the movement of the traffic, and so we run out into the road and try and stop the cars or maybe even chase after a few, forgetting that the idea was to just sit here. And of course, all of this running around only adds to the feeling of restlessness in the mind. So, training the mind is about changing our relationship with the passing thoughts and feelings, learning how to view them with a little more perspective. And when we do this, we naturally find a place of calm. Will we sometimes forget the idea of the exercise and become distracted? Of course we will. But as soon as we remember, here we are, back on the side of the road again, just watching the traffic go by, perfectly at ease in both body and mind....